Case Number 26263: Small Claims Court

OCEAN MEN: EXTREME DIVE (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

The Case

Two men, seeking to one-up each other in the insane sport of free-diving, get
forty minutes worth of profiling in this 2001 documentary, unearthed and
re-issued in lavish high-definition.

Originally shown in IMAX, Ocean Men: Extreme Dive employs the
sweeping, gorgeous cinematography we've all come to expect from these massive
productions. But the subject matter is personal and intimate. It's just two
dudes. Two crazy dudes, but a pair of personalities nonetheless: Pipin Ferraras
and Umberto Pelizzari, friends at first, the most bitter of rivals later,
constantly trying to outdo each other.

Why are they crazy? While I can appreciate their discipline, ambition and
mental and physical fortitude, the pursuits they've committed to are straight-up
suicidal. Their free-diving exploits are constantly boundary-pushing, with each
man trying to break records. These records happen to involve a human being
submerging himself under hundreds of meters of water.

Ferraras is after the world record, dropping himself over 500 feet
underwater using any apparatus necessary to get him down and back up. His only
limit: he has to do it all with one lungful of air. Pelizzari operates on the
other end of the spectrum. Oh, he's still trying to sink like a stone like his
pal, but this guy is a purist; no apparatus, no weights, nothing mechanical.
It's just him and his wetsuit and his lungs and he's trying to break the world
record of unaided free diving.

It's a cool juxtaposition and the filmmakers squeeze a nice amount of human
drama out of it. Of course, the film ends with the two dives. And, of course,
the cinematography is fantastic. Overall: cool little documentary, even if these
guys are straight-up lunatics.